Power to the people

LEUNG KWOK-HUNG stands in Western Magistrates' courtroom number six, dressed in a leather jacket and faded blue denims, with his trademark long, black hair trailing way past the base of his spine. From behind, Leung looks like an American Indian, something akin to a maverick anti-hero from a Clint Eastwood movie. He stands accused, along with three of his April 5th Action Group 'comrades', on 18 charges arising from protests in the public gallery of the Provisional Legislative Council building. The four are alleged to have created a disturbance, resisted arrest and obstructed officers, and to have displayed a banner during two Council meetings. As he delivers his plea - 'not guilty' - he turns round to glance at the public gallery crowded with press, protesters and plain-clothes policemen, and the American Indian diasappears. Beneath his leather jacket Leung is wearing a red and black T-shirt bearing the image of Che Guevara. He suddenly looks like a different type of anti-hero. And he looks nervous.

UNDER the Legislative Council (Powers and Privileges) Ordinance, the maximum penalty for displaying a banner in Legco is HK$2,000 and/or three months jail. Creating a disturbance, resisting arrest and obstructing officers each carries a maximum penalty of $10,000 and/or a year in jail. The Ordinance had never been used since its inception in 1985. So when Secretary of Justice Elsie Leung Oi-sie decided to prosecute she was effectively asking presiding magistrate David Dufton to set a precedent.

After listening to the long-haired man and his three comrades declare their innocence, he sat through four days of plodding, bilingual evidence, the monotony broken only by Leung's attempts to put over his political points. He started his defence by declaring the PLC illegal, and four days later finished it by saying, 'The rule of law has two limbs: law-making by the legislature and law-making by the courts. I see before me a crippled man standing on one leg. The legislature leg has already been crippled, and I hope the other leg will not be crippled too.' After four days, the magistrate says he needs time to think - and adjourns for more than five weeks. When the four come back he tells them they are guilty of all charges, but are reminded that they were charged because they disrupted council proceedings, not for political reasons. And they are sentenced, seven months after the offences, after untold hours of police work and who knows how many more of legal advice.

LEUNG'S IS A familiar face in the Hong Kong goldfish bowl - so familiar that he is known by just a nickname. The tabloids call him 'Cheung Mo', meaning 'Longhair', a natural, neutral enough nickname, short and sweet and requiring no explanation. But the sobriquet belies the serious nature of his route to fame. While the length of his hair is an attention-grabbing sideline, his political beliefs and actions are what keep him on the front pages. Hong Kong is used to seeing Longhair's face leading a crowd berating China, and although in private, away from the police line and the placard, the face and the man are much softer, it is the clenched fist held high in anger that has become the image of Longhair and the image of Hong Kong protest across the world.

Back in the heady days of June '97, when it seemed the universe felt the need to ponder Hong Kong's fate, Time magazine wrote that, 'If Hong Kong's post-handover leaders decide to crack down on protesters, the first targets probably won't be Martin Lee, the internationally prominent Democratic Party leader, or Szeto Wah, the popular activist whose political organisation China has labelled 'subversive' '. The crackdowns, according to Time, would hit a 'small group of veteran protesters from the edges of Hong Kong's democracy movement, whose faces are better known to police - and mainland authorities - than the public.' The magazine talked about Lau Shan-ching, the former Hong Kong teacher who assisted the mainland dissident movement and who subsequently spent 10 years in a Chinese jail, and about Lam Chi-leung, a Marxist 'social crusader'. In conclusion it also mentioned Leung Kwok-hung, a 'laid-back activist ... a self-educated Trotskyite' who was also influenced as much 'by Lennon the musician as Lenin the ideologue'. It adds, 'Given his pro-communist, anti-capitalist beliefs, he [Leung] says, 'the world will not shed a tear for me.' ' After a 16-day, post-handover honeymoon, the newly formed Provisional Legislative Council met to vote on a bill calling for the suspension of seven laws, hastily passed in the final days of the pre-handover Legislative Council, that Tung Chee-hwa's administration said were ill-advised. The laws were mostly to do with labour rights. One even went so far as to grant unions collective bargaining power. On July 16, the day of the council vote, the world's cameras were again on Hong Kong. The Secretary-General of the Confederation of Trade Unions, Lee Cheuk-yan, ended a five-day hunger strike the same day, saying the freezing of the laws meant, 'the death of the rule of law in Hong Kong'. Two hundred protesters shouted their disapproval; some swung hammers and smashed huge lumps of ice outside the council chamber. But it was the long-haired Trotskyite who made the headlines.

Leung, with Koo Sze-yiu and Cheng Ki-kin, two of his April 5th Action Group comrades, began a protest from the public gallery of the council chamber. 'The Provisional Legislature is a rubber stamp!' cried Leung. 'Return the power to the people!' A banner was unfurled, and after a few minutes the three were pulled out of the public gallery by PLC security guards; council proceedings were suspended for 10 minutes.